NEWSWIRE

CANADA MAKES PAN-AM PUSH

In 2015, Canada will host the Pan American games in the Greater Toronto Area. In an effort to promote cricket across the region, Cricket Canada, in conjunction wtih ICC Americas and West Indies Cricket Board, has launched a major initiative to have cricket included as a sport in the 2015 competition.

Cricket Canada is coordinating activities to put a “cricket group” together from cricket playing nations in the Americas and the countries that make up West Indies Cricket Board. Cricket Canada hopes to put cricket up for consideration as a sport in the upcoming meeting of the PASO in Mexico City in March 2012. Cricket Canada has been a strong proponent of cricket in multi-sport events such as the Pan Am Games, Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games. Canada partcipated in the 1997 cricket event at the Commonwealth Games in Malaysia.

“This is a very important opportunity for the development of cricket in Canada as well as the region" said President Ranjit Saini.

"We learnt a bitter lesson last year when our request for funding to host (the 2012 u19 Cricket World Cup) was declined due to lack of priority for sports that are not part of multi-sport international events such as Pan Am, Commonwealth and Olympics”.

As a direct result of lack of funding to make necessary upgrades to the infrastructure and not having sufficient time to launch other efforts, Cricket Canada had to take the decision to withdraw from the hosting opportunity.

Saini believes Canada is well positioned to host the proposed T20 event saying.

"The inclusion of T20 cricket will reduce the demand for large infrastructure requirements and hence creation of new and/or up grading of the current grounds will be easily affordable. Most of the infrastructure exists and only minor upgrading is required.

Cricket Canada is proposing that T20 format of the game be included in the Pan Am games, in the same vein its inclusion in the Asian Games.